The Internet Reporters Summit, Part 2
Getting really real with Kat Tenbarge, Michelle Santiago Cortés, Rebecca Jennings, Taylor Lorenz, Terry Nguyen, and Zoë Haylock.
I can talk YouTubers and TikTok drama with anyone for any length of time, but the trials and tribulations of life as an internet culture reporter are much more of an internal struggle. The pandemic meant my interactions with other writers on this beat were limited to Twitter faves or, if I was feeling brave, a DM. Until things open back up for good, there’s no casual way for internet reporters to meet up and swap advice, vent frustrations, and most importantly, celebrate just how much digital culture coverage has grown in the past year. So at Embedded, we invented one.
Yesterday, we shared part one of my Zoom conversation with six digital culture and technology reporters who are leading much of today’s internet coverage. We chatted about the disparity between the creators who make scandalous headlines and the normal hard-working members of the creator community, race and giving credit to the proper communities when covering trends, and what audiences are most interested in reading about the internet.
Today’s conversation is a bit more personal—how we had to fight to carve out these beats at our respective publications, how we juggle constant social media use with our own mental health, and where we like to hang out on the internet when we’re off the clock. —Kate Lindsay
Kat Tenbarge, digital culture reporter at Insider specializing in accountability and scandals. Wrote the story exposing allegations of sexual misconduct and bullying against David Dobrik and his crew of creators.
Michelle Santiago Cortés, lifestyle writer at Refinery29 covering internet trends and niche online culture.
Rebecca Jennings, reporter for Vox focusing on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.
Taylor Lorenz, internet culture and technology reporter for The New York Times.
Terry Nguyen, reporter for Vox whose coverage leans toward business and consumer trends. Also writes the newsletter Gen Yeet.
Zoë Haylock, news writer at Vulture following internet trends and scandals. (Zoë’s internet went out the day of the panel, but we've added some responses that she later submitted by email.)
Moderator: Kate Lindsay, writer and co-founder, Embedded. Formerly of nofilter and Refinery29.
Why do you think the digital culture beat has been largely defined by women writers?
Taylor A lot of men, they view a lot of the topics that we write about as not important or not real technology reporting. Like, people will call Rebecca or myself "TikTok reporter," as if a multi-billion dollar Chinese tech company is not worth taking seriously. So some of it is just sexism. The stuff that we cover is very dominated by young people and women.
Harassment is a problem that almost every non-cis-male journalist deals with, but an additional challenge for internet culture reporters is dealing with the wrath of fandoms. What has that experience been like for you all?
Michelle The rule of the internet—if it exists, there's porn for it—applies to fandoms, honestly. If it exists, there's a fandom. I think that's also part of why this field is dominated by women, because so much of what elicits such an intense emotional response, gets people to click and gets people to sit down with something and read it, is tied to emotions. And it's very much tied to developmental phases or their private lives or their social lives or their personal lives. I think of whatever I'm covering in the most intense, emotional, concentrated way.
Zoë So far, in my experience, even the worst things I’ve written about influencers have not brought on as much hate as the throwaway jokes I make about rappers have. As incessant and creatively hurtful internet as fandoms can be, I’ve mainly witnessed their passion for the uncovering truth about scandals, thankfully.
Rebecca One thing that I've noticed a lot of on the internet when we talk about fan culture is it's very much a culture of black and white thinking. Someone's canceled or [fans are] stanning. There's no middle ground. So whenever I write something that's not good or bad about someone—which is humanity, people are not good or bad—some of the stans or some of the people that hate them will ... I got so many DMs from writing a profile of Trisha Paytas about like, "So do you like her or not?" I don't know, you decide! What does that matter? And some people were like, “Just by writing about her, you're giving her a platform” or they were like, “You were being so mean, you were so sexist towards her.” I got every possible opinion chastising me for not going all the way, one way. Any good, worthwhile profile or piece of journalism is not going to be black and white. It's going to be in between.
Kat I completely agree with that. And I think that, particularly with people like Trisha Paytas, that really brings out this sort of dichotomy of her stans versus like her antis, the people who think she's inherently problematic and so anything that you write about her that isn't a 100 percent critical in their eyes is some kind of wrongdoing. In terms of the types of coverage that we do, fandoms can really impact how a story plays out in the public sphere. With the David Dobrik stuff, if his fandom was at the peak of where it was a couple of years ago when he was at his most popular and the most people were watching him and he was very beloved, I feel like a story like that would not have landed as impactfully as it did when he had been kind of on a hiatus and his fandom wasn't as strong as it was at a different point.
A lot of this harassment, from fandoms and other groups on the internet, plays out of Twitter. Why do you keep using it?
Taylor I think a lot of people think when they see a harassment campaign on Twitter that it's only happening on Twitter, and it's not. Whatever hate you're getting on Twitter, if you angered some group on the internet, they're going to be all over [your other social media]. So I don't even feel like quitting Twitter is worth it. But there's a lot of obvious context collapse on Twitter. I can at least now see things from a little bit further away. Like when you just tweet something so off the cuff and people just latch on and misinterpret it, I feel like now I can recognize that more for what it is. Whereas two years ago I would've been getting so upset and now, I don't know. I've become ... I don't care about it anymore. I guess emotionally detaching yourself from these platforms is helpful.
Have any of you set social media boundaries?
Rebecca I don't use TikTok before bed. That's a hard and fast rule for me because it will literally mess up my sleep cycle for like weeks to come because I am an early-to-bed, early-to-rise person. So the only time of day where I allow myself to just scroll through TikTok is either [when I'm] bored at work, procrastinating, or on the treadmill. I walk uphill on the treadmill and scroll.
Terry It's not a hard and fast rule that I follow, but my self-presentation on social media is not an accurate representation of who I am. And I think that detachment is really critical in my work because I do know a lot of people on Twitter are trolls and the way they interact with certain people, certain reporters, is just in bad faith. Whenever I encounter weird messages or see people being totally ridiculous online, I just kind of am like, this is an aspect of being online and you just can't allow that to bleed into your personal life. And so I think over the past year, especially with the pandemic, I've definitely tried to set boundaries with how I personally react to things that I see on the internet, even if it's not specifically directed at me.
On the more positive side, is there an internet community you really admire or think is a joyful use of the internet?
Kat I spend a lot of time on Pinterest. I never used it at the height of its popularity, but these days I feel like it's one of the few apps where there's little to no conflict. It's very aspirational. It's a very idealized type of living that people exhibit on Pinterest, so I definitely don't try to compare myself to it, but there's very much, at least for me, something really calming and soothing about just really pretty aesthetically pleasing images.
Zoë I’m a firm believer in a group DM, especially the low-pressure ones you have with friends or mutuals across different platforms. You could be dissecting news on Twitter DMs but over on Instagram, they’re just thirsting over SZA. There’s always an outlet for whatever obsession my pandemic-rotted brain is currently on.
Taylor I feel like I don't go into a quiet space on the internet. I was going to say I have an account just to follow birds, 'cause I love birds, but there's actually so much drama in that world, it's not even a reprieve. I really like certain Discord communities that I've found. I'm in some servers that are just chill and great. It's just friends or a community around something that we all love. And so it's calm.
Michelle I'm in the comment section of most things I come across. Like, at this point, I'm on TikTok for the comments. I'll be sending people TikToks like, "Look at the comments, look at the comments, look at the comments." But I recently wrote about hyper specific playlists and I interviewed some of the creators behind playlists that have really long names like, "this is a soundtrack you listen to while you're waltzing with your enemy to Lover after you killed the King" or whatever. And the comments are just the most wholesome, precious thing. Like it's people responding to that premise like it's a writing prompt. And I guess I really would be lying by omission if I didn't say that K-pop TikTok comments are really—it's just people baring their souls. I feel like thirst is the most vulnerable, tender part of a person.
Terry I recently was reporting a story on shrooms and I've been on subreddits of Shroom and LSD users. r/LSD is just people showing the art that they're making while they're tripping. And it's just so wonderful. Everyone is just like, "What dosage are you on? You look like you're having a good time! Stay safe." Like that's all there is to that subreddit. It is the most wonderful place in the world.
Let's talk more about our actual work. Media outlets have finally caught on to the value of covering internet culture. Was it an uphill battle for you to get to this point?
Rebecca I remember—this was back in, like, fall 2018—I was like, "I think we should explain TikTok" and all the editors were like, “What is that? What are you talking about?” And I was like, "No, it's really big. It's going to be a thing." And then the "What is TikTok, TikTok explained," it's still a top story just from search. Ever since then, honestly, it has not been a struggle. I think they wanted to frame me as a TikTok reporter back then, because I was still feeling out my beat, and then they gave me this newsletter once a week. In the beginning of the newsletter, no one read that [coverage] and everyone was so mad. They were like, "Why are you coming into my inbox talking about TikTok? No one cares about this." And now sometimes they're the most popular posts on the site.
Terry Rebecca doesn't give herself enough credit. For someone writing on the business side, my stuff is sometimes really boring compared to hers. You should mention that your e-boys explained [and VSCO girl explainer] from before the pandemic [are two] of the most read stories on the site.
Taylor I work at a more legacy place—I mean, The Atlantic was legacy, but they kind of let me do whatever—[so] we have to really explain things to our audience and validate things. I'm writing this story about Jake Paul again and the first, you know, 500 words are explaining who he is. I wonder when we get to that point when we don't have to.
I will say I definitely have like a huge chip on my shoulder—I need to chill about it—but I think this beat still is not taken as seriously as it should be. It's outrageous that most places have, like, one internet culture reporter where they're like, "Oh, you're the internet person. You're a TikTok person," when these other beats that, in my opinion, aren't as culturally relevant, have so many more resources. I remember getting a lot of scoops around Vine, and I got the details of this meeting when these Viners tried to negotiate, and I pitched it to so many news outlets and I was freelancing on top of my job. It was so hard to get editors to even pay attention. I feel like it's a little bit better now. Like, editors will look. But there could be more [coverage], especially around these niche communities. One thing that Palmer Haasch at Insider does a lot—[which] I love—is coverage of fandoms and the anime communities and stuff that I feel like a lot more mainstream places ignore.
Rebecca At Vox, Aja Romano has been covering this beat for years and years and years. And they are such a star, but they get so much hate because they've been around these fandom communities for so long. I wish that they got more credit in this because they're really talented.
Taylor I feel like that about Katie Notopoulos, who I always wanted to be and has been on this beat for like, I think her whole life. She was so good, even back in 2010 and 2011, about writing about communities without shunning them, taking them seriously. When Caroline Calloway was getting canceled, [Katie] was the only reporter who actually called and interviewed people who had bought tickets to her class. Everyone else just went on this Facebook group and wrote up this viral thread. Jenna Wortham also is somebody that I don't think necessarily covers our beat, but the predecessor to our beat, writing about tech from the user side and taking into account women and people of color. A lot of those people don't get the credit that they deserve.
Another unique thing about this beat is how often we find ourselves talking to teenagers and people under 18. How do you navigate that?
Rebecca I have struggled with this a lot. My early career was at a kids magazine, so I would have to go up to children in the park—I was told to do this, I was an intern—and get their parents to sign something and [say], “Can I interview your three-year-old?” I've always really, really enjoyed working with kids and talking to kids. It's so much easier to talk to kids about their internet presence because they get it even more than adults do sometimes.
I think the thing that they have a hard time understanding is that black and white thinking, because I think a lot of creators view media as this enemy-type figure or they expect media to work more like YouTube drama rather than reporting news. I've had to explain to kids sometimes that this is going to be—Taylor, I learned a lot from you about how you tell kids what the deal is like, what might happen if the article that they're in goes viral. I always, if I need to, go through the parents. Parents tend to get really nervous when their kid is becoming a creator or whatever, but once you talk to them and make sure that they're okay with everything, I just feel so much better about talking to kids.
Taylor I'm sure you guys get this too, but a lot of people are like, "Oh, you're a teen reporter, you're a Gen Z reporter." And it's weird because I'm sure a lot of us, we started covering this a few years ago when it was still synonymous with millennials. Also a lot of the people that we cover are not that young. I'll say kids as shorthand cause I'm in my 30s now. So I'm like, "Oh, that 24-year-old kid," but they're very much adults. There was one week where it was Jeffree Star and Shane Dawson in that drama and then Trisha was commenting on it. And Ethan [Klein] was obviously, like, having his show. I was like, I love that this whole drama is all people in their 30s. Maybe people will stop saying that this is a teen beat, because it's not, it's just culture.
Kat Kind of going off what Rebecca was saying, when I do talk to kids, especially in the 16 to 21 range, they intrinsically get certain things about journalism that adults don't, which I think is really interesting. When I do investigative work and talk to younger people, they are much more [understanding of] this idea that we need receipts for things. That's obviously very internet-speak, but I'll talk to adults who won't understand that I need screenshots and I need official IDs to prove certain things. But the kids get it. I think that's really refreshing. A lot of older people who look down on the practice of reporting on teens and interviewing teens, they don't get that.
Terry I do want to add that as someone who interviews not necessarily young creators, but more so fans or just young people who exist in America, they're very adept at conducting themselves and, especially older teens, very careful as to how they speak and how they could be construed. One thing I try to do as a reporter is sometimes massage their quotes and make sure it sounds right—it's not like I'm like changing what they're saying, but sometimes when you're speaking, you don't often make as much sense as you'd like and I'm always double checking with them [to say] that these things could last for a long time. I did a story on the GameStop rally, and the people who participated in that were like, "Oh, I maybe want to work for a banking institution one day. Can you not put my full name?" And so I was like, "Oh yeah. You're thinking three steps ahead."
Michelle Mostly people I interview are under 25, but I do encounter pretty regularly a not super online young person, because they're real. They have a sizable presence in some way, but they're not familiar with the language or sometimes they're just way younger than you think. I've interviewed 13 year olds. I do take on this kind of like school counselor, older sister role, where I really go over boundaries with them. "How do you feel? Do you like talking about this? Is this too personal?" Reminding them, you can say no in all of these different ways. It does make for a clunky interview obviously, and it doesn't feel glamorous.
Final question: If you could each launch your own publication, what would it be like?
Michelle I would like to use the language of the big three: It would be Rookie sun—that spirit of female youth and fan girliness, explore everything, nothing's taboo. And then it would be meme page rising. It would look and feel really chaotic and unsettling, but then potentially n+1 lunar. Dream publication.
Taylor I love the Daily Mail. I know it's toxic, but I would do something like the Daily Mail that's a little tabloidy, but also does the stories that people are talking about. Then I would cross it with Real Life. Some of it's too academic and I'm like, I'm not smart enough to understand these essays, but it's very thoughtful. So yeah, it would be a thoughtful kind of tabloid.
Zoë I guess if I had unlimited support from a mysterious investor, I would love to cover all the weird and wonderful creators and niche communities out there.
Rebecca Mine would just be all profiles of people. 'Cause that's my favorite thing to write.
Kat I'm envisioning a Politico for people who are so invested in the influencer industry and the drama. It would be really intense, investigative. My pet peeve that is a necessary evil is having to break down things for a mainstream audience, assuming that people have no idea who anyone is. So I feel like I would really thrive if I could just assume that the people reading already have an encyclopedic knowledge of everyone I'm talking about. And then I could just write the most niche details about these things.
Terry I would love to do something that's kind of like ... The Baffler and n+1 have really great essays, but they always fall into the explainer realm, or just brush the surface. I would love something that's almost The Intercept-like in terms of leftist critique of this very capitalist influencer economy.